Canmore BASE jumping deaths raise questions about wingsuits

For the second time this summer, a BASE jumper leaping from a Canmore-area mountain in a wingsuit has fallen to his death.

The Calgary Eyeopener's Jennifer Keene asked Capt. Andrew Spencer, a member of the Canadian Armed Forces parachute team the SkyHawks, about the risks of this extreme sport.

Q: Can you explain how it works to jump off a mountain wearing a wingsuit?

A: I'm not actually a base jumper myself, but essentially the act of jumping — whether it's from a mountain or from a plane — in most cases you've got a parachute attached. And you simply, you leave whatever it is you are on ... and then following a certain period of time you deploy your parachute and from there on you perform your landing drills as safely as you can.

Q: But how is a wingsuit different than using a parachute?

A: Even when you are wearing a wingsuit you still have a parachute on, so in the case of doing something like BASE jumping, it's actually different than typical sports skydiving in the sense that you are jumping off … some kind of thing that is attached to the ground already.

And then the wingsuit is something that helps you carry a bit more lift so you can fly horizontally across the ground further than if you were just to fall without the wingsuit.

Q: You would think the parachute would be some sort of protection. Why is it that the parachute doesn't seem to save people in the case of these BASE jumps?

A: So in your typical sports skydiving that you'd find at many licensed drop zones across Canada and internationally you are typically jumping out of an aircraft and so when you jump out of an aircraft you are essentially jumping from a high altitude, usually around 13,500 ft.

You have multiple parachutes, so you have your main canopy, your reserve that's packed by a specialist and ... a lot of drop zones now require you to have an automatic activation device. So you have all these parachuting systems that protect you.

On top of that you have time. So when you leave an aircraft, you have about a minute of free fall and then even about five minutes under your parachute before you land. When you BASE jump the key difference is most of these structures people are jumping off of are much lower, so now you're looking at less than a thousand feet.

So in that situation, the BASE jumping parachute, there's only one and you have very little time so your margin of error is much slimmer. And if your main parachute doesn't work, or if there is an issue, you are out of time and that's it.

Q: In your estimation how risky is this kind of thing, BASE jumping in a wingsuit?

A: If you look at the statistics, I don't have them on hand, but generally speaking your chances of injury or something is along the lines of one in 40 in BASE jumping and in traditional skydiving, I think it's more like one in 10,000 if not even less so in terms of injuries. So it's significantly more risky than what you'd find at most licensed drop zones.

Q: How much experience do you need in order to start doing it?

A: So for wingsuiting … you don't necessarily need to BASE jump, people can drop out of aircraft wingsuiting. Typically to do it at most drop zones you need 200 jumps and what is called a B licence. Generally speaking the B licence is your second tier. And on top of that a lot of drop zones will require you to do a wingsuiting course as well to learn nuances of that particular part of the sport.

For BASE jumping … it's not that there aren't locations that are licensed and run and insured. The thing about BASE jumping is any individual can take their sport parachute and jump off of anything. Not unlike if you owned an ATV and decided to do what you wanted to do on your property despite whatever rules and regulations exist.

You got to assume the risk yourself … Realistically there is nobody there to regulate specifically how much experience you need to do anything in that regard.

Q: I would imagine that it tends to attract people who are risk takers anyway.

A: From my personal experience within the sport there are definitely people who are searching the thrill.

Myself, my interest in the sport is less the adrenaline side and more the fascination with flying and enjoying the different aspects of the community. But certainly there are people in this sport, not unlike any other sport, that like to push themselves, push the limits of their experience.

Skydiving is labeled an extreme sport and in spite of all of the ways, especially within the military, that we mitigate the risk to ourselves. When you're pushing your boundaries in an extreme sport, generally speaking, the consequences of a mistake are quite high.

- MORE CALGARY NEWS | On 2-year anniversary of fatal rollover, cousin pleads guilty to dangerous driving

- MORE CALGARY NEWS | Kananaskis trail guide author could spend 7 years revising books, thanks to 2013 flood